Church History

In addition to Joseph’s own unwavering testimony, were you aware that the Savior Himself also bore witness of the scriptures that the Prophet Joseph produced? What does the Savior say about the Book of Mormon? Here are a few of His declarations.

More Church History Features

If we find a brother or sister in distress and do nothing, we will be subject to the judgements specified in Matthew 25. Those who ignore sufferers “shall go away into everlasting punishment”. Though most of the early members of the Church suffered their own kind of distresses, that didn't stop them from keeping their baptismal covenants and reaching out to aid one another.

Can you imagine what it would have been like to personally hear Joseph Smith testify of seeing God and angels? If you had lived in the days of the Prophet Joseph, what sacrifices would you have made to hear him speak?

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be in the room when the Prophet Joseph Smith received revelation or translated scripture? We have testimonies from those who were there. One of the blessings of having first-person, eyewitness accounts of Church history events is that they give us an “armchair view” of the unfolding of the Restoration just as the early members of the Church experienced them.

Returning home from calling on a sick person, James [E. Talmage] learned of the terrible suffering and destitution of the [Martin] family, which was stricken by diphtheria and without help. Ward Relief Society officers had been unable to find anyone willing to go to the pest-stricken house. Fear of the dreadful disease had reached panic proportions. When he heard of the Martins' plight, James immediately changed clothes and proceeded to their home.

The Prophet Joseph stands unique among scripture scholars. During his ministry, Joseph Smith was inspired to revise and retranslate 3410 verses of scripture in the King James Bible. He also produced almost a thousand pages of new scripture. And he is the only individual to restore scriptures from every previous gospel dispensation. But it is not just the quantity of scripture that is unprecedented, but the quality.

Joseph Smith, the founder and first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, could have been an entirely plausible prophet on the basis of just his personal revelations. Instead, his public ministry begins with a very different kind of revelation: the Book of Mormon. This involved the dictation of a lengthy, complex book within the stunningly short period of just two or three months. The Book of Mormon recounts a thousand years of history for a people of whom none of his contemporaries had ever heard. To what end would he do such a thing?